Historiographical debates on the causes and implications of early modern and early industrial settlement legislation, which determined the locality where one could apply for poor relief, have so far focused mainly on England and Wales. These regions are deemed exceptional for the national character and universality of their Poor Laws (1601), associated Act of Settlement (1662) and later amendments. However, if the focus is shifted from the national legislative framework to actual practice, several continental regions had relief and settlement arrangements that bore many resemblances to those in England and Wales. This article draws on existing literature and archival research to explore the evolution of settlement law and practice in the Southern Netherlands, i.e. present-day Belgium, from the seventeenth to the late nineteenth centuries, and compares its main features with the situation in England and Wales. This comparative exercise brings to the fore a number of striking resemblances and remarkable differences, which question the precise nature of the British exception. While further research is needed to gauge fully the causes and consequences of the observed similarities and differences, this article aims to demonstrate how a comparative approach towards issues of settlement and relief not only elucidates our understanding of the particularities and generalities of the English/Welsh case, but also widens our insight into the social, economic, and cultural implications of settlement arrangements in general.

Agricultural incendiarism was a perennial factor in social relations in some areas of nineteenth-century rural England and is often understood by historians as an expression of ‘covert’ social protest. However, such categorisation risks oversimplifying what may be diverse and locally specific factors. In 1830, the high sheriff of Somerset presided over England's last ever scene of crime execution at the Somerset village of Kenn following the conviction of three labourers for incendiarism. This requires explanation. Crime scene executions were not only anachronistic and rare, but unfashionably brutal and expensive by this time, and were not undertaken lightly; moreover arson was soon to be removed from the list of capital statutes. Yet, oddly, the case was not obviously connected to the agenda of ‘social protest’ characterised by Swing as it emerged just months afterwards; indeed understanding the behaviour of the county authorities here requires an appreciation of a considerably more specific and parochial set of concerns and conditions. The Kenn incendiaries, it is argued here, were put to death at the scene of their crime to protect and uphold the principle of informing in a rural community whose dysfunctional social relations made the practice a judicial necessity.

There has been much historical debate over the role of aristocratic landed families in local and national politics throughout the nineteenth century, and the impact of the First, Second and Third Reform Acts on that role. Additionally, the period from 1881 in the Scottish Highlands was one of acute political and ideological crisis, as the debate over the reform of the Land Laws took a violent turn, and Highland landowners were forced to address the demands of their small tenants. This article addresses these debates, taking as its case-study the ducal house of Sutherland. The Leveson-Gower family owned almost the whole county of Sutherland and until 1884 dominated political life in the region. This article examines the gradual breakdown of that political power, in line with a more general decline in financial and territorial influence, both in terms of the personal role of the Fourth and Fifth Dukes of Sutherland, and the broader impact of the estate management on the mechanics and expectations of politics in the county.

Revision of the early estimates of the extent of labour shortages in agriculture during the Great War suggest that, for England and Wales, labour was more plentiful than contemporaries asserted. However national averages disguise important regional variations. Using newly discovered material from a District Committee of the Westmorland County Agricultural Executive, supplemented with contemporary commentary and reports, this article investigates farm labour shortages in the uplands. It considers labour supply and shows that assumptions about the level of recruitment of farmers and their families and about the availability of substitutes as used in revisionist estimates cannot be supported here. It then shows that the ‘plough up campaign’ imposed by Government increased labour demand in the uplands to a greater extent than in other regions. This combination of reduced supply and increased demand served to exacerbate existing labour shortages and resulted in labour shortages that were more severe than is suggested by the revisionist figures for England and Wales.

This paper takes as its starting-point different perspectives on the organic movement's history since the 1940s. It identifies the polarised views of those who see a linear continuity in its development and of others who claim that a new generation of ‘counter-urbanites’ in the 1970s introduced an entirely distinct element. Drawing on recorded interviews with several of the leading figures in the seventies generation, the article argues that this generation was not as independent of its forebears as some of its members have claimed. It also throws light on the experiences of those who were inspired by the ‘self-sufficiency’ philosophy of John Seymour. The Steinerian Bio-Dynamic movement is identified as an important thread of continuity, as is the role played by two long-lived organic farmers, Dinah Williams and Mary Langman. While the seventies generation indeed affected the organic movement's direction from the 1970s onward, particularly through the Organic Growers Association, the case for a complete disjunction between different phases of organic history remains inadequate.